


Personal Notes (10) Happy Valentine's Day.

by longhairshortfuse



Series: Carlos's Secret Diary [10]
Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Death, Gen, Pain
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-25
Updated: 2014-05-25
Packaged: 2018-01-26 12:47:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,157
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1688867
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/longhairshortfuse/pseuds/longhairshortfuse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There's a housewarming, and some cards. It does not go well for Carlos and his team.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Personal Notes (10) Happy Valentine's Day.

Valentines day here is not like elsewhere. 

We have lost two postgrads in such a confusion of violence. I saw them die. I saw it and there was nothing I could do to prevent it. Nothing I could do to save them. I did what I could to spare them pain and it will haunt me forever. I can truly say that this is the worst thing I have ever done yet not doing it would have been unthinkably cruel. 

There has been extensive structural damage and carnage all over town but mainly concentrated in the outskirts. There is some minor damage in Old Town but no fatalities are reported there. I saw the devastation first hand, up close. 

Chris and Priya moved in together to a new house on the outskirts last week after several months of dating as secretly as possible then bickering over whose apartment to live in. They held a housewarming party after checking what that might entail in this town, you can't be too careful where local customs are concerned. Their party was the day before Valentine's day. We all went, except for Ell who said she had to meet with our sponsors to ask for some new equipment. 

I went straight from the lab and when I was almost there I realised I still had the small handgun Ell purchased for the night-shift duty scientist to carry, just in case, in my lab-coat pocket. Mainly I keep it so that I know it isn't pointing at anything important, like delicate electrical equipment, expensive glassware, the most annoying postgrad or my internal organs. Priya and I are the only ones who have fired it, we went out to the sand wastes for some target practice once. I was ok after she taught me how to aim, but she was deadly accurate. 

The party went well, I suppose, although I was my usual quiet self. I joined in some science chat, remembering to check that I wasn't lecturing, but the gossip was lost on me. I evaded questions about dulcet-toned radio show hosts and stayed in or near the kitchen, mixing drinks. I knew that having worked in a bar would be useful experience eventually. I had stopped off at the 24-hour emergency florist and bought them a bouquet of gerbera, cheerful orange and yellow, my favourite flowers. Chris picked up a pink calligraphed envelope from the floor and set it by the vase and I thought nothing of it. We all drank a bit too much and we all ended up sleeping over in the little house. Chris and Priya in the privacy of their own room, the rest of us on chairs and floors. I could not get comfortable at all and the youngsters' snoring annoyed me so much that I went out to sleep on the fully-reclined passenger seat of my car. 

In the morning, early, Chris ran out to rouse me saying that Priya had opened her Valentine card and been showered explosively with sharp little paper cut-out cupids and glitter and did I know any first aid. I went in. Chris noticed a calligraphed envelope stuck in the mailbox and opened it without thinking. I saw the force of the explosion, saw Chris fall backwards alive and cursing in agony. Priya was in the bedroom, writhing on the floor, froth oozing from her nose and mouth, shattered glasses by her head. She was covered with glitter and cupids. I saw the glitter eat into her skin and work its way deep into her muscles. 

I put on my nitrile gloves, two pairs just in case, and told the rest of the postgrads to get out and go somewhere safe, warn Teddy at the bowling alley to expect casualties. The wind was rising and the air temperature fluctuating dramatically. I told Priya to hang on, I'd get her to safety and tried to pick her up. She kicked me off with surprising strength and said, with broken but resolute words, that she knew she would die today. Eventually. She knew what was happening to her, she had seen this corrosive toxin tested on rats when she worked in a military bioscience lab before joining us. She told me to give her the gun before the neurotoxin component of the weaponised glitter caused agonising muscle spasms that would take away her ability to fire. 

I said no. She looked at me, fury in her staring eyes, and said that I had no right to let her die like this when she still had a choice. With tears of helpless frustration blurring my vision I took the safety catch off the gun, checked it was loaded, and gave it to her. I held her hand steady and screwed my eyes shut until I heard the shot and her screaming stopped forever. Chris managed to crawl and writhe into the house and saw Priya die. Lying collapsed on the carpet, twitching and sweating and frothing, Chris said five last words to me. 

"You kill me. I can't."

I took the gun from Priya's limp, wasted and scarred but still delicate hand and I shot Chris once, fatally, dropped the gun and walked outside. 

There was a storm approaching, I could see it, hear it, smell it. I would go back later to collect their bodies and make sure their families knew what happened to them. But for now, being alive was more important. The street was deserted. I got into my car and drove out into the sand wastes as fast as I dared.

The storm was apocalyptic. I watched from a distance as tornadoes skipped over houses, picking up and tearing apart whole buildings, missing out a few then changing course impossibly to go back until there was nothing left. Then lightning struck again and again and again, burned what remained, followed by torrential rain as if the ground needed to be washed clean. A whole neighbourhood obliterated, gone as if it never existed. Chris and Priya gone, but I will remember them, their deaths burned into my eyes and ears and hands forever.

I drove back into town slowly by a different route, carefully keeping out of the way of the emergency vehicles and clean up crews. They will be busy for some time. I went to the apartments on the floor below mine to see if there were any personal effects that I could send home for them, but both had been stripped bare. 

I called Ell but couldn't find words for her voicemail. I hung up, leaving only dead air for her to hear. I tried to call Cecil, to ask him if he knew what had happened, could he explain this town to me, but the network had gone down. I sat alone on my bedroom floor, blood on my lab-coat and my jeans, still wearing my gloves, shaking and sobbing and screaming.

The radio clicked on.


End file.
